Highlights in Mechanics 2017

Looking back at the past year to inspire the future

Mechanics in 2017

2017 was a year filled with groundbreaking research and technological advances. As we start 2018, we would like to take a look back and reflect on some of the most popular research from 2017, sourced from our book and journal portfolio to inspire us for 2018.

Read on to find the most downloaded research of 2017

Executive Editor, Nathalie Jacobs on 2017

Mechanics in 2017It has been a busy year for most of us. It is difficult to choose from the many highlights of the 2017 Mechanics programme, but let me note a few books and journals which have made us really proud:

The first good news was brought to us in February. We were informed that our textbook Turbulence: Introduction to Theory and Applications of Turbulent Flows, authored by the late Frans T. M. Nieuwstadt, translated and updated for a new audience by Jerry Westerweel and Bendiks J. Boersma, was awarded the 2017 TAA Most Promising New Textbook Award. We were really happy with this mark of international recognition for this course text that has proved its worth over the years already.

One of our other textbooks, A First Course in Fuzzy Logic, Fuzzy Dynamical Systems, and Biomathematics, written by de Laécio Carvalho Barros, Rodney Carlos Bassanezi, and Weldon Alexander Lodwick received a great review in zbMATH. The book serves as a sound and balanced exposure to the subject of fuzzy sets by bringing the fundamentals of this technology and presenting their applications to dynamic systems.

Over the Summer period and well into Autumn we published many proceedings volumes for conferences held all over the world, in addition to the rest of our large publishing programme. Some of these conferences I attended myself, and it is always a real pleasure to meet you – our authors, contributors, editors and board members, and hear from you what is happening in your field.

In November a new contract was signed with IUTAM, the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics. From 2018, the IUTAM has recommended the IUTAM Bookseries (already published by Springer) for the publication of IUTAM Symposia proceedings. We are very proud of having re-established our ties with such an esteemed organization. The first new projects are on the horizon, and we cannot help but be excited to be working with IUTAM again.

As for journals, our journal Computational Particle Mechanics was accepted for indexation by SCOPUS in March and in December we were informed that the journal was also accepted by SCIE, JCR and Current Contents. The journal was only started in 2013 by editors in chief Tarek Zohdi, Peter Wriggers and Eugenio Oñate and together with the Editorial Board members they are doing an excellent job. In a very short time frame the journal has come to the center of attention of the mechanics community.

Last but not least, the journal Multibody System Dynamics celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2017. We are really proud to work with Editors in Chief Werner Schiehlen and Jorge Ambrosio as well as with the board members on this journal. Maintaining a journal's reputation over a longer period is also an achievement not to be underestimated!

Thank you for writing, reading, reviewing and publishing with Springer. We look forward to working with you again in 2018!

Nathalie Jacobs is Executive Editor Applied Sciences and is responsible for the acquisition and publication of a book and journal portfolio. She welcomes textbooks, authored monographs, edited volumes, proceedings and major reference works. Nathalie joined Springer in 2000 and she is based in the Springer office in Dordrecht, the Netherlands.